


Now Until the End

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Dubiously Consensual Soul Bond, Episode AU: s01e04 Magic Bullet, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Soul Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 20:56:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1579289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU from 1x04, "Magic Bullet." </p><p>   <em>"Why the hell did you do that?" Derek demanded. "Why would you bond with me? You were going to leave me for dead, you didn't want anything to do with helping me."</em></p><p>  <em>"Okay, first of all, that was like two hours ago and I've grown a lot as a person since then," Stiles said.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Now Until the End

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "forced soulbonding" square in hc_bingo.
> 
> Many many thanks to verity and templemarker for beta! <3

Derek was only distantly aware of hitting the ground. The darkness that had been pumping from his arm to his heart had overwhelmed him. He could feel it invading every inch of his body, crushing most painfully around his heart. He had to get up--open his eyes--tell Scott--tell Stiles--

He felt a different weight against his chest, not the numbing pressure of the wolfsbane but something hot against his skin. From a long way off he heard Stiles's voice say, "Oh God, don't kill me for this."

Something warm and golden pushed into his chest. It lit him up, pushing the darkness back even as the light sunk into him like claws, curling tight around his heart and closing its grip.

Derek opened his eyes and stared as blood made a patch of black wetness on the sleeve of Stiles's jacket. The smell of Stiles's blood--and the echoed feeling of Stiles's pain, aligned with his own--made Derek surge to his feet. Stiles stumbled and swayed, and Derek caught him, pulling Stiles unthinkingly against his side as he turned to look at Scott.

Scott was staring open-mouthed at them. "Did you guys just--"

"No," Derek snapped, because he hadn't done anything, and he couldn't think about what Stiles had done. He was still poisoned, and he still had to cure that before anything else.

"I don't feel good," Stiles moaned, dropping his head against Derek's bare shoulder. 

Derek gritted his teeth against the warm rightness of feeling Stiles's skin against his and focused on the sick, queasy feeling that reverberated through them both. 

"Wolfsbane is also poisonous to humans," Derek said tightly, leaving the _you idiot_ implied. "Scott, the bullet. Now."

Scott held it out, and Derek realized he needed his good arm to hold on to Stiles. Even with the wound shared across their bodies he didn't want to try to do this left-handed. 

"You do it," Derek said, jerking his chin toward the table. "Break open the bullet, and then--"

Stiles's fingers fumbled into Derek's pocket without Derek having to tell him. He tugged out the lighter, passing it into Derek's hand so Derek could slide it across the table to Scott. 

Scott organized the wolfsbane-laced gunpowder into a little pile and lit it, jerking back from the flash and the brief purple flame. Derek stared at the pile of ash that was left and hoped to hell this was going to work, that he was remembering the cure right, that this would clean the poison from Stiles's blood as well as his own. Stiles was leaning more heavily against him by the second, and his hands and forehead felt fever-hot against Derek's skin. 

Derek didn't ever want to let him go.

He shoved Stiles away from him as hard as he could, because there was no other way to make himself do it. Scott darted around the table to catch Stiles, who moaned and pushed away from Scott as Derek leaned over the table, scooped up the ash, and crammed it down into the wound. 

Derek definitely felt it when he hit the floor this time, and he felt Stiles go down, too. Derek let himself scream as he thrashed through the pain, but this was a better, brighter pain, the poison burning out of his blood. He twisted around to look at Stiles while the wound on his arm was still healing, and he found Stiles looking back at him with a dazed grin. Their faces were only inches apart.

"That," Stiles said breathlessly, "was _awesome_."

Derek could feel Stiles's excited delight through their brand new bond. He could feel his own impulse to smile back, to agree, to make Stiles happier--to touch him, to strip him bare and....

Derek made himself scowl. He pushed out anger to counter Stiles's happiness, scrambling backward as he got to his feet. He didn't offer a hand. He left Stiles lying on the floor with his joy crumpling into shocked hurt.

"Why the hell did you do that?" Derek demanded. "Why would you bond with me? You were going to leave me for dead, you didn't want anything to do with helping me."

"Okay, first of all, that was like two hours ago and I've grown a lot as a person since then," Stiles said, pushing up to his feet, his wounded look hardening into stubbornness. "And second, I was trying to _save your life_ , which I did."

"No," Derek snapped. "Scott did. I did. All you fucking did was bond us together _permanently_ while I was unconscious."

All he'd done was tie himself to Derek in a way that neither the Argents nor the murderous new Alpha would ignore. The Argents had already tried to kill Derek; they weren't going to stop trying, and they wouldn't hesitate to kill a human who'd chosen to bond himself to an animal. The Alpha would definitely never leave Derek alone now, not when Derek had the added power and resilience a bond would give him.

If Derek and Stiles were lucky the Alpha would only force them into his pack and make them kill with him. If things went the way they'd been going for Derek for the last six years, the Alpha would probably kill him and bond with Stiles while Stiles was still in shock from the sundering, fuck him to seal the bond before Derek's body was even cold.

Stiles's face twisted into an expression Derek couldn't read. He had felt Derek's horror and disgust at their likely future, even if he couldn't read Derek's thoughts.

"You did this to me," Derek insisted, focusing on the thought of what would happen to Stiles because of this to keep the horror fresh enough to carry through. "You did this against my will, and I don't want it. You need to break the bond right now."

Stiles looked baffled. Derek felt a weird surge of energy between them, but the bond didn't break. If anything it felt intensified, as if Stiles had grabbed hold of him tighter. 

"I don't, um," Stiles grimaced, and Derek felt his twinge of embarrassment, like he'd been caught without his homework. "I don't know how. You break it, if you don't want it."

Derek ducked his head and gritted his teeth again. He knew his eyes were still glowing when he looked up, but he couldn't master them right now; he had to concentrate too much on pushing his anger at Stiles, resisting the sweet, soothing pull of the bond between them. 

"I can't. Wolves can't. Humans are the ones who break promises. You started this, you have to finish it."

"Finishing would technically mean--" Derek took another step back as he felt the surge of desire through the bond. He couldn't tell if it was what Stiles was feeling or the bond itself, wanting to be sealed. The images flashed relentlessly through his mind: stripping Stiles down and fucking him over that steel table, taking what Stiles couldn't possibly have meant to offer when he put his hand to Derek's skin and offered the strength of his own body to save Derek's life.

"Over my dead body," Derek insisted, because he wasn't going to seal a bond Stiles had never really wanted, even if the bond was making both of them feel like it was a good idea. He wasn't going to force himself on this kid when it would mean death for them both. "Figure it out, break it. Don't come near me until it's over."

Derek edged toward the door and was suddenly aware of Scott, standing there watching all of this in silence. He gave Derek a nearly identical hurt look to the one Stiles was wearing, and this time it was easy to be angry. 

"Don't tell me you agree with him," Derek snapped. "Do you want him bonded to me forever? Do you want me to fuck him every night for the rest of his life? Do you want to smell me on him?"

Scott's expression turned stubborn just like Stiles's, but he was angry, too. Good. He shook his head. 

"Keep him away from me," Derek insisted, and then he grabbed his shirt off the floor and walked out, forcing himself to take every step like he was struggling against a high wind or a swift current. Every cell of his body wanted to be pressed up against every cell of Stiles's, but his body had never once wanted what was good for anyone, especially not for himself. This wasn't any different.

* * *

Derek ran all the way back to the house and then remembered that the Camaro was still down in the warehouse district, where he'd parked it when he caught the scent of the Alpha. He turned and started back toward town, and it was a few minutes later that he realized he was following the tug of the bond, homing in on Stiles instead of walking toward his car. Derek stopped with an effort, catching a tree and sinking claws into it to anchor himself. 

He stood there for a moment, catching his breath and forcing himself to focus. He had to go back to the house. He had to stay away from Stiles.

He could feel Stiles concentrating too. The focus of will Stiles was exerting was almost exactly the same--resisting the pull of the bond--but Derek thought there was something else in it, too, busier than Derek's effort to simply stand still. He was doing research, Derek concluded after a moment. He must be figuring out how to break the bond.

"Good," Derek said out loud, and then noticed that the feeling of approval and gratitude for Stiles's efforts wasn't pushing away anger. He'd lost track of his anger, somewhere, which hadn't happened in a long time. It was his anchor for a reason.

Derek leaned his forehead against the tree, summoning up all the anger he could find--at the bond, at Stiles for initiating it in such a hopeless situation, at the Argents and the Alpha who killed Laura for putting them into this situation to begin with, at Laura for coming out here without him and dying--

That anger, buried deepest and coldest, jolted him into control at last. Derek pulled his claws free of the tree and turned his back on Stiles, jogging toward the house. It would be over soon. Stiles was smart, and he was human. Humans broke bonds all the time, and theirs wasn't sealed. It wasn't the culmination of some long courtship, flowering out of genuine love. It was just the frantic impulse of a boy who'd never seen anyone die and hadn't wanted to start with Derek. Stiles would break the bond and that would be that.

That would be that for Stiles, at least. Derek couldn't break a bond, and he wasn't sure his side of it would dissolve even when Stiles broke from him. There was a chance Derek would stay bonded to Stiles, feeling this tug forever. But if Stiles didn't reciprocate, then Derek would be able to go on resisting it. Stiles would reject him, he wouldn't behave as if he were bonded to Derek, and that ought to be enough to keep him safe from the Argents and the Alpha. Stiles wouldn't be killed for saving Derek's life. That would be enough. It had to be.

Derek went into the house, up to the pink room that had been Cora's. His room and Laura's, at the back of the house, had burned away to nothing, but Cora's room, the former nursery, had mostly survived. Derek sat down in a corner and thought about the fire that had killed his baby sister when she was eleven years old. She would be Stiles's age now, if she'd lived. 

Derek's anger burned steadily, keeping him safe and still, until he felt Stiles's focus rise to a sudden crescendo. His concentration became something more intense--ritual, Derek thought. Stiles had found some ritual to break the bond. Derek's mother had always said that rituals served mostly to focus the mind, so that made sense. 

The bond seemed to sharpen between them until Derek could almost hear Stiles chanting out some rote words. He could sense the force of Stiles's resolve working on the bond, and he tried to feel nothing at all that might carry through to Stiles as he waited for the bond to break. It was almost over now.

But something went wrong. Stiles's focus on the bond reached the point where Derek actually could hear Stiles's words. Derek heard his heartbeat and smelled him as if he were just upwind. 

"This is my will," Stiles repeated in a shaky voice trying to sound stern. "This is my will. This is my will."

Energy surged through the bond, but it didn't break; it seemed to intensify instead. Derek was at the bottom of the stairs before he recognized what he was doing. He threw himself to the ground, skidding across the floor to the closed door, and lay there for a moment, dazed. He could still feel Stiles, though less clearly now that the ritual had ended. He seemed frustrated and confused and--relieved?

"No," Derek said out loud, and the anger came easily this time. He pushed it through the bond at Stiles like a shove, like a scream. _No. You don't get to stop there. You have to break the bond._

He felt Stiles's anger kindle and didn't know whether he was catching it from Derek or responding in kind. Whatever it was, it led back into that feeling of focused searching. Stiles was returning to his research, trying to find another way to break the bond.

Derek stood up, dusted himself off, and eyed the front door warily. He couldn't trust that he would catch himself again if Stiles failed the same way at the next ritual. He needed to shut himself in, and he couldn't do it here. The house wouldn't hold him. 

Not above ground, anyway.

* * *

There was a steel cage down in one of the harder-to-find parts of the basement which had survived the fire. The key was still waiting in the lock for anyone to come along and use. It had been built to withstand an out-of-control werewolf on a full moon. He and Laura had each spent some time in it when they were having a difficult moon; it was practically a rite of passage, an inevitable part of going through puberty as a werewolf. The cage had also hosted a succession of omegas and visitors passing through their territory for one reason or another.

Derek locked himself in, and then studied the key thoughtfully. If he threw it away where he couldn't reach it, he would be stuck in the cage until someone else happened along and found him. The people likeliest to come looking were people he needed to be able to run away from. But if he kept the key with him, nothing would prevent him from letting himself out to go after Stiles at the next surge of the bond. 

Derek shoved the key into his mouth, forcing it into his throat with his fingers and swallowing as best he could around cold, jagged metal. It seemed to shift downward, and he took his fingers out of his mouth and swallowed again. The end of the key shifted against the back of his throat; Derek was abruptly on his knees, vomiting up bile and blood and the key into a disgusting puddle on the dirt floor. Derek stayed bent over it, coughing and spitting and waiting for his throat to heal. He stood up and kicked some dirt over the key and decided that that would have to do, as a solution to his dilemma.

* * *

By the fourth time Stiles's focus sharpened into the knife of ritual, Derek didn't really expect anything useful to come of it. He'd struck sparks from the bars, clawing at them, and given himself bruises that healed more slowly each time, battering wildly against the walls. He'd scrabbled at the floor, but so far the stink of bile and his own blood had been enough to remind him not to go for the key. 

This time he sunk his claws into the floor near the corner of the cage and dug his heels in, bracing himself in place. He hated himself for the relief he felt at the moment when the bond turned so clear that he could hear Stiles through it. This time he would swear he could see what Stiles saw: Scott slumped wearily in the corner of a bedroom with every flat surface covered in printouts. Stiles's heartbeat felt too fast, and Stiles felt jittery, about to shake out of his skin.

Derek didn't understand that until Stiles looked down. Stiles's hand wrapped with slow deliberation around the hilt of a kitchen knife, raising the point to his own bare chest.

" _No_ ," Derek screamed, nearly a howl. He saw--felt--Stiles rock a little, as if he'd heard it, or felt Derek's frantic refusal.

"Well what the hell else do you want me to try?" Stiles whispered, and Derek was so startled that he fell still in his corner.

"Yeah, I can hear you," Stiles whispered. "When I focus enough, it's like you're right here. It feels good, or at least it makes me stop feeling so bad because you're not here."

"Don't," Derek said, because that would only strengthen the bond--talking through the bond was probably strengthening the bond, but it was the only way he had to contact Stiles right now. "Just don't--you don't have to die to end this, Stiles, there's got to be another way."

"Die?" Stiles sounded and felt honestly puzzled by the idea, like the knife he was still holding to his chest wasn't sharpened to a fatal point. "What? Dude, no, I--look, if I were going to try something like that shoving a knife through my own ribcage is not the way I would go. I mean, for one thing you have to get down under the bones and aim up--"

" _Stiles_ ," Derek gritted out.

"Right," Stiles agreed promptly. He didn't feel desperate or resigned in the way Derek would have expected if he meant to die, just determined and wound up. 

"Also, no, this is just the next-best ritual I can find. It calls for drawing blood--you have to cut a symbol over your heart to block the bond with blood. It's a thing, okay?"

"Is Scott there?" Derek demanded, and he felt Stiles's assent before any words. "If he gets startled awake by the scent of your blood he's going to go totally out of control. You need to wake him up, he needs to be helping you with this."

He felt Stiles hesitate, and then the knife lowered. Stiles said quietly, "I don't want him to touch me. That's--seriously, dude, I'm getting pretty close to saying fuck it, we're stuck with the bond, but I can't stand having Scott too close to me. Scott! My best friend since we were four years old! We have no personal space. Except now we do, I guess, because the bond is fucking weird and Victorian about touching people I'm not bonded to, what the fuck is that?"

"Stiles," Derek repeated, dragging Stiles back to the point, which was breaking the bond so he wouldn't have this problem anymore. "You don't have to let him hold your hand, but you have to tell him what you're doing before you do it."

Stiles heaved a put-upon sigh, but then his attention wavered from Derek and the bond enough that Derek's ability to sense him through it faded out to mere awareness of his emotions. He felt nervousness and then frustration, and he guessed Stiles was explaining the ritual to Scott, who probably found it at least as alarming as Derek did. 

Eventually Stiles's attention came back, though. Derek opened his eyes, focusing on his own surroundings instead of seeing through Stiles's eyes. He kept his heels in the dirt and his claws anchored in the wall.

Then the pain hit, a startling sting in the center of his chest. Derek looked down and watched the lines of blood appear as his skin parted where Stiles dragged the tip of the knife, tracing a complicated symbol across his--their--skin. The tracing slowed after the first couple of cuts as the blood welled messily, and Derek pushed stern resolve at Stiles. _Do it, finish it, end it, come on, just a little more._

The motion of the knife steadied, finishing the symbol with a few more lines. Derek stared down at the blood. He could smell it--his and Stiles's both, mingling hot and copper-sharp in his nose as if they were one body bleeding. Even knowing it was futile he tried to help, willing away the bond between them. 

He might as well have been willing his arm to fall off. Nothing happened, and nothing happened, and then the cuts healed. He watched them close up on his chest and on Stiles's as Derek's healing carried through the bond, which was as powerful as ever. The ritual focus Stiles brought to bear winked out in a burst of surprised dismay.

Derek sank down against the wall and realized he'd been arching up against the pain. He was suddenly weary, and was unsurprised to recognize daylight leaking in through the high barred window. Stiles had been up all night trying to break the bond, and Derek had been awake with him.

Stiles felt as tired as Derek did. Derek liked to think the bewildered hopelessness was coming mostly from Stiles, but he knew it wasn't his alone. Derek didn't know how they were going to break the bond. He only knew they had to; even through the leaden exhaustion that weighed him down he could feel the need to be near Stiles, to touch him, to claim him decisively. Wolves always felt the bond more strongly, but then again he doubted Stiles had even an average human's proportion of self-control to resist it. 

They had to resist it. If they sealed the bond, Derek would die, and if Stiles survived the sundering he would surely wish he were dead rather than suffer whatever the Alpha or the Argents might do to him. Scott would be left without either of them to guide him, and the Alpha would go free. Laura's death would never be avenged, Scott would be dragged into a murderous pack, deaths would pile upon deaths....

Derek wasn't aware of the moment when the relentless fear slipped into nightmares. He drifted through spiraling visions of the consequences of everything he'd done wrong--blood and fire, always blood and fire--until the dream became a single hideous image. Stiles, forever out of his reach but forever calling to him, the bond holding Derek to him through everything and yet never completed. Stiles calling for him, calling his name, needing him, and Derek could never go to him without killing him, could never--

Derek startled awake as Stiles stepped through the door of the basement room that held the cage, when the bond between them flared into hot, urgent hunger. Stiles froze like a deer and like a panther stalking a deer all at once. Derek pressed harder into the corner, uncomfortably aware of having been brought to bay.

But when Stiles stepped forward it was with stiff caution, not a predator's silent slink. 

"Derek," he said, and he sounded hoarse and stuffed up. His eyes were swollen. Derek could smell the salt of tears as well as sweat. 

"You were having bad dreams, and I couldn't--I couldn't get the bond right so I could talk to you to wake you up, and I couldn't--I had to come. I need to--I need you, I need to touch you."

By the time he finished speaking Stiles was pressed up against the bars, as close as he could get to Derek's corner. He gripped the bars instead of reaching through, and Derek extended his claws again to clutch at the wall behind him with all his strength. Stiles's scent was in his nose, Stiles's heartbeat pounded--erratic with exhaustion and stress--in his ears. 

Derek only had to touch, only had to stand up and take two steps. He didn't even have to find the key. He could grab Stiles right through the bars, pull him close enough to seal the bond, close enough to feel _complete_. 

Derek squeezed his eyes shut and turned his face aside. "You woke me up. I'll be fine now. You should go home and get some sleep."

"I can't," Stiles whispered. "I can't without you, I can't sleep. Scott fell asleep and I tried but you weren't there."

Scott. Scott should have prevented Stiles from coming into the woods. If Derek called Scott--but Derek would have to let go of the wall to call Scott. He would have to retract his claws. If he had soft, human fingers, he wouldn't be able to resist touching Stiles with them. 

Scott was bound to notice eventually that Stiles was missing. Derek kept his claws exactly where they were.

"You can't stay here," Derek said. He'd been angry before, hadn't he? He was supposed to be angry. He couldn't feel anything but wanting Stiles. And tired. He was so tired underneath the wanting; he'd never felt this tired in his life. 

"I don't want you to stay here," Derek added, which was true in a way. "You need to leave. You need to break the bond, and it will be harder the more time we spend together."

Stiles let out a bleak syllable of laughter. "Dude, I don't know if you noticed, but I fucking failed at that already. I can't do it. I have no idea how, you have no idea how. You said wolves don't break bonds. Maybe this is a wolf bond because it's got you in it, maybe a puny human can't break it."

"You have to," Derek repeated. He let himself feel the trapped terror of his own inevitable death, and of dragging Stiles with him into that danger. "You have to, Stiles, you can't--you can't make me do this. I'm not going to do this."

The noise Stiles made this time was closer to a sob. Derek's whole body jerked toward him, wanting to touch, to comfort him, wanting to tell him _it's not that I don't want you, but it's too dangerous_. If he showed weakness, Stiles would never let him go.

"I'm so fucking sorry," Stiles said. There was a dull thud, like he was banging his forehead against the bars, not quite hard enough for the pain to translate over to Derek. "I just--I couldn't--"

Derek's chest ached as Stiles's breath stuttered, holding back more sobs, and a sudden raw tide of grief overwhelmed Derek. It felt strange; he knew it was Stiles's grief, and not his own, because it wasn't angry, wasn't twisted up in guilt and horror. It was so _simple_. For a second Derek glimpsed what it would have been like to be able to simply mourn his own lost family, to mourn Laura, and then Stiles said breathlessly, "My mom."

Derek was looking up before he'd decided to. Stiles was down on his knees, meeting Derek's eyes levelly. He sniffed hard and went on. 

"My mom died of this brain thing. When I was nine. She--my dad--they weren't. Bonded. I mean, who is, it's like one in a thousand or whatever, but. They tried, and I--I think--now I think he tried to get her to try with someone else, if it would save her. They had these fights I didn't understand at the time, I was just furious that they could be mad at each other when Mom was sick, like anything else mattered when--" his voice went small and high before he choked off the words, swallowing tears. 

"I was there, Derek. With her. Dad wasn't, but I--that night, I was sitting with her and I watched her die. I watched her fucking die, and I was watching you and I thought, I'm gonna watch him die. I'm gonna watch somebody else die, and I couldn't. I couldn't. Not again. Not without trying anything I could to save you."

"You could have cut my arm off when I told you to," Derek said, meaning it to come out cool and ironic. His voice got away from him instead, sounding harsh with pain. He would, literally, have given his arm not to have dragged Stiles into this mess in this way.

Stiles winced and turned his face away. "I'm sorry, I--I'm so sorry, I never meant--I mean I used to, I used to imagine it. Being able to save somebody--Lydia, there's this girl, Lydia, I imagined that all the time, saving her. And then she would--she would see me, she couldn't ignore me anymore, and she would--"

 _Love me_ , Stiles didn't say. 

Derek didn't let himself think about the things he'd done in the hope that a girl would love him afterward.

"I just didn't want to be alone," Stiles whispered. "Don't you ever, don't you want someone? Don't you want someone who has to stay? I didn't mean to make you do anything--I'm sorry, I know it's like--it's like rape, it's worse, I get that, I have read so many awful websites in the last twelve hours, but I--I didn't mean it like that. I just didn't want to be alone, and I didn't want to watch you die, and I'm sorry, and I can't fucking fix it."

Derek wanted to say it was all right, that Stiles could stay. He did want someone; the fact of being omega tugged at him all the time. He was packless, orphaned for the last and most definitive time. A bond would anchor him, strengthen him, make him and Stiles an inviolable pack of two within any other pack Derek might ever join. It would give Derek the strength to resist joining any pack at all, if he chose to avoid other werewolves for the rest of his life--however long that was likely to be. 

For a second he thought of taking Stiles to the Camaro, driving away with him, out of reach of the Alpha and the Argents, all the way back to New York if they had to. If they sealed the bond Stiles's age wouldn't matter anymore; they'd be effectively married, and they could go anywhere together. They could stay together, they could--

Stiles sniffed extensively, clearing his nose and throat, and then went on, sounding a little practiced. "I read--I read a lot of shit last night, but I know it doesn't have to be sex. If it's that you don't want that--we can seal it some other way, I'll never touch you like that if you don't want me, but we just--I think we have to do this, Derek. I don't think there's any other way."

Derek pounded the back of his head hard against the wall, and Stiles yelped in pain. "Ow, I'm sorry, you don't have to--"

Derek hadn't done it to get at Stiles, no matter how badly he'd needed Stiles to stop talking. The ache lingered longer than it should have, divided across their bodies. Derek was laboring to heal them both. The strain of resisting the bond was getting to him.

"You need to leave," Derek insisted through gritted teeth. "We just have to keep resisting the bond. Sometimes if they're not sealed they just dissolve."

"It hurts," Stiles argued. "It already hurts not to be near you. I can't sleep, I can't eat. I can't _think_ away from you."

"Good," Derek insisted fiercely. "When it hurts too much, you'll break the bond. You'll figure out how. When it comes down to your survival or the bond, you'll pick survival. You'll have to. It will be instinct, like pulling your hand out of a fire. Then we're both free and this is over. If you want to make this right, that's how you do it."

Stiles moved and Derek reluctantly met his eyes again.

"Is it going to work for you?" Stiles asked. His gaze was searching, as if he could find the truth of what Derek was behind his human face. "It's got to feel just as bad for you, like logically we must be feeling the same thing. Are you going to be able to break the bond when it gets too bad? When it--"

Stiles stopped short, and didn't say anything about Derek escaping a fire to save his own life.

"I'll be fine as soon as you break the bond," Derek insisted, and then he heard a familiar furious heartbeat approaching--riding that little-kid bike again.

Derek tilted his head back and howled, giving Scott something to home in on. When Derek looked at him again Stiles was just staring, wide-eyed and baffled. 

Derek said, "Scott's coming for you. You're going to go home with him, and you're going to wait this out until you figure out how to break it."

Stiles's confusion settled into something else, a roil of misery and guilt and the sharp sting of rejection that Derek could not--dared not--soothe. 

Derek put his chin to his chest and focused on his senses, since he couldn't summon anger: the dull ache in each fingertip as he strained against the grip of his own claws, and the sharp dusty smell from the dirt floor, plus the cold rusty stink of iron, the sour biological smells of the mess he'd made earlier. He flexed his feet in his shoes, digging his heels in deeper, and he stretched his hearing out beyond Stiles's rough breathing and too-fast heartbeat, straining to hear the forest around the house, the river flowing and little animals moving around. He could hear birds taking off frantically all along the path of Scott's approach, but he couldn't bear to listen too much to Scott. Scott was coming to take Stiles away.

Derek gritted his teeth and tuned out Stiles and Scott both, talking himself through one of the focus exercises his mom had made him practice when he was younger--right here in the cage, sometimes, when he took a wild turn as a kid. 

_One sense. Focus on one sense._ Not sight or smell or hearing, because he was too used to those, and taste was too near to smell. That left touch. Not his hands--again, too easy--but the rest of his body. He focused on the chill of the air on the back of his neck, and the way that it was also cool on his wrists, on his side where his shirt had ridden up above the top of his jeans. He focused on the slight give of the floor under his heels, rocked his ass against it to feel how it was more tightly packed in the corner. He focused on the way his shoulders were stressed by this position, keeping his hands behind him, and it was almost, almost working.

Scott burst into the room in a sudden barrage of smell and sound. "Stiles! Come on, you're not supposed to be here."

It took Derek a long look to understand what he was seeing: Scott was wearing his padded lacrosse gloves, carrying a longer stick than he usually used in the practices Derek had watched. As Derek watched Scott slid the head of the stick deftly between Stiles and the bars of Derek's cage, levering it to push-pull gently against Stiles's chest without actually touching him. Stiles was still staring at Derek, unmoving.

Derek tried to make himself say something, to tell Stiles to go, but Scott was still talking. He cajoled Stiles in words Derek paid no attention to, prodding him with the stick. Stiles took a backward step, and then another and another, the stick shoving him all the way, and then--suddenly it wasn't Scott, Derek's baby brother who refused to stay adopted, anxiously tugging Stiles away from where he wasn't supposed to be.

Another werewolf was between Derek and his mate, taking him away.

Derek lunged, ripping his hands free of their inadequate restraint. He felt a faint sting across his fingers, but the yelp of pain from Stiles--that werewolf was _hurting_ Derek's mate now--took up all of Derek's attention. His fangs dropped and his eyes flashed, and he roared as he threw himself against the bars, striking sparks and spattering blood as he fought against the bars. 

Scott's eyes blazed yellow, and he snarled back, but Derek knew he was bigger, older, could take his mate back--

Stiles was in the doorway now, about to leave without being pushed. There was blood running down his fingers. He was looking at Derek like he was afraid.

Derek stopped and looked at his own hands, streaked with blood. He'd ripped out three of the claws from his right hand when he pulled free of the wall. It must have torn out Stiles's fingernails at the same time. Stiles was bleeding, but not because Scott had done anything to him. He was hurt because Derek had lost control.

Derek sagged against the bars, shaking his head and forcing his features back to normal. Scott's eyes reverted to brown, but he kept himself, and that stick, between Derek and Stiles.

"Go," Derek said hoarsely. "Stiles, you have to go."

Stiles nodded, and he backed out the door and out of sight. Derek made himself look away then, rather than watch Scott go with him. His attention fell on the sight of his own fingers still bleeding, the nails still torn away. He slid down to sit on the ground, waiting for them to heal. Stiles wouldn't stop bleeding until Derek healed, but the blood kept dripping from Derek's fingers for a long time.

* * *

He could still smell Stiles's blood. There were some drops of it drying on the floor, over near the door, and a little more going away down the basement corridor. Derek slumped heavily against the bars with his eyes closed, his face turned toward that scent. He had that one thread of a connection to Stiles, and he wasn't sure whether it made the longing better or worse.

It didn't really matter; longing was all he could feel. It felt like hunger, and like pain, and like an overheated itchiness that he thought must be a fever. It felt very much like wolfsbane, except that it started at his heart and radiated outward, and he never actually blacked out. 

His limbs felt heavy. It occurred to him vaguely that he wasn't sure he could actually move if he needed to. He might not be able to run away if Kate Argent came back with her gun, or if the Alpha who had killed Laura came back to finish off the Hales completely. He thought of his Uncle Peter, left entirely undefended, but he doubted the Alpha would bother with him. If he was a stranger, he might not even realize that that particular coma patient had ever been a werewolf at all.

It occurred to Derek that the Alpha might not be a stranger, but he couldn't hold on to the thought. He couldn't think of anything but Stiles, who wasn't here, and the bond, which still was. It hurt in a dull, persistent way that nothing in Derek's life ever had. He supposed it was a taste of what humans experienced when they were hurt or sick. His body had been able to fight against the wolfsbane, even if it had been losing, but the bond just drained everything out of him and left him empty.

* * *

At some point it turned out that the bond had left him one thing. He thought for a while about just sitting there and waiting it out, but it turned out that he wasn't quite far enough gone to sit there pining for Stiles until he pissed himself. He only realized when he got up and fell down and got up again that it was dark, and that he'd been waiting out the bond for more than twenty-four hours now without eating anything. 

He wasn't actually hungry or thirsty. That was a bad sign, he knew; he couldn't remember ever being disinterested in food. Even with a bullet in his arm he'd made Stiles get him takeout while they waited for Scott to come through. Werewolves went through a lot of food, especially when they were healing.

Derek wasn't healing. 

He staggered back across the floor to sit down near where he'd left the key. After a while he scraped the mostly-dry muck aside to unearth it. He wiped the key clean on his pants and and then sat with it in his hand, staring down at it. He could let himself out. He didn't think he could walk far enough to get to Stiles, by now. He didn't think he could walk far enough to get out of the tunnels, even. There wasn't any point to even unlocking the door.

Stiles would let go soon. He had to, or Derek would take them both down, unable to heal and unable to break the bond.

He lay down on the floor with the key in his hand and thought that he wouldn't be looking Stiles in the eye while he killed him, wouldn't feel his heart stop beating. He couldn't decide whether that made it better or worse, but it didn't really matter anymore.

* * *

Derek was on his feet, key clenched in his fist, before he even knew why.

Stiles was screaming. Derek could feel Stiles's pain blazing through his body, and he had to fix it. It didn't matter what else happened afterward, he couldn't let Stiles _hurt_ like that. He had to fix it. He had to _be there_. 

Derek found the lock with his free hand, brought the key around and tried to slide it home.

His hands betrayed him, fumbling like they never had in his life. The key skittered away, bouncing brightly off metal while Derek threw himself at the bars, reaching for it. He felt it bounce off his fingers and away, and he only noticed that the sun was up again when he saw the key lying there on the floor, out of his reach, shining silver at him.

Derek put his head back and howled. 

Stiles had been right. Human as he was, he was going to keep his promise until it killed him. The bond refused to break.

* * *

Everything hurt worse than before, and Derek had no idea how much time had passed when he heard a heartbeat approaching. It was beating slower than his own, which felt mouse-fast and irregular. 

It wasn't Scott or Kate, the two hearts he knew too well to mistake. It wasn't Stiles. His sense of Stiles was still too far away, too deeply sunk in pain. 

Derek was no more or less surprised to see the sheriff step through the doorway than he would have been to see anyone else. After a second--watching the man look down at him with an expression Derek couldn't read--Derek supposed it made sense.

"Headshot," Derek suggested, his voice coming out as a croaky whisper. "Should be fast enough." 

His death would break the bond faster than the injuries could carry over to Stiles; that or a one-stroke beheading were the best ways to kill one half of a bond without the other, and they would work as well on a werewolf as anyone else.

The sheriff's heartbeat ticked up when Derek spoke, and he stepped inside the room. 

He said, "Oh, now you're the expert," with an exasperation that didn't quite make sense to Derek. It should have been cold fury, or grim determination to save his son. It should have anything but the sheriff crouching down to pick up the shining key.

"I'm sorry," Derek tried.

The sheriff shook his head as he frowned, fitting the key to the lock. He did it on the first try; Derek's fingers spasmed as he watched, remembering his own failure. The cage door swung open. Derek thought that that was supposed to be his cue to get up and move-- _Stiles_ \--but the sheriff stood in the opening and Derek's arms and legs felt like part of the floor now. 

"You look worse than he does," the sheriff said, getting down to his knees behind Derek. "I didn't think that was possible. Here, son, can you--"

Derek had no idea what the sheriff was asking him to do, but the hand sliding under his shoulder and the warmth of the sheriff's body leaning over him was the best thing he'd ever felt: a hot shower and his mother's touch and Laura's hug and _Stiles_ , all at once. Derek lunged up, pressing his face into the sheriff's shoulder, chasing the scent of Stiles and more than that, the feeling of _pack_ that suddenly overwhelmed him.

"Ah," the sheriff said, sounding startled but not angry. 

His arm went around Derek, and he shifted his weight, tugging Derek a little more upright. He let Derek lean against him as he moved. Derek kept his eyes closed, breathing in gasps that were almost sobs, as if there hadn't been any oxygen in the room until right now. His chest hurt. His hands ached, closed in tight fists where he was clutching the sheriff's jacket.

"Yeah," the sheriff said after a while. "We thought that might work. I could touch Stiles when Scott and Melissa couldn't, and we thought that might mean I could touch you, too. The bond recognizes family."

Derek stayed where he was another moment, breathing against the sheriff's jacket while the misery that weighed down his body ebbed into identifiable sensations: a dull ache in his chest and his joints, a sharper throb in his skull, a wrong feeling that wasn't quite pain or nausea in his stomach, a skittering itchy wrongness over his skin as if it were pulled too tight. 

It took a moment for him to understand what the sheriff had said, and what it meant.

"Family," Derek echoed back belatedly. He meant to say it as a question, but it came out flat and rough; his voice sounded angry when, for once, Derek couldn't find it in himself to be angry at all.

"I understand I'm your bond-father," the sheriff said, sounding exasperated again. "So yes, family."

Derek squeezed his eyes shut at the steady sound of the sheriff's heart as he spoke those words, and his arms stayed firmly around Derek. _Family_.

"Stiles," Derek said, and that one came out a little closer to the question he meant it to be.

"He's hanging on," the sheriff said, and now he sounded grim, and his heartbeat kicked up with something that was probably worry. "He'll be better when we get you to him, so why don't we see if you can stand up, all right?"

Derek nodded and tried to push away, but the sheriff's grip on him tightened. "Slowly, son. Come on, I've got you."

The sheriff eased them around in stages, getting Derek up to his knees, getting his shoulder under Derek's armpit to prop him up to his feet. Derek's head seemed to detach from his body when he was finally all the way upright--his vision went bright and then dim, and the sheriff's heartbeat wavered in and out of his hearing. He was vaguely aware of the sheriff's hand on his face, the sheriff's arm holding him up, and after a moment Derek's senses solidified again.

"Sorry," he said. His tongue was thick and uncooperative. "Sorry."

"You're conscious," the sheriff said simply. "That's honestly more than I was expecting. Stiles hasn't been upright or coherent for hours now."

Derek frowned in concentration--partly at the complex process of putting one foot in front of the other, partly at the idea of Stiles having lost consciousness hours ago. He tried to summon up enough breath and strength to say a few words in a row, lining them up carefully in his head while he took slow, wobbly steps down the tunnel beside the sheriff. "Said I looked worse."

"You do," the sheriff assured him. "As long as nobody's trying to touch him or wake him up, Stiles just looks feverish and exhausted, which I've seen before. You look like you've been locked in that cellar for about a month with somebody sucking your blood. I thought you might be dead when I walked in. I've definitely seen livelier-looking corpses. I'm guessing if you weren't a werewolf I'd be carrying you out of here."

Derek frowned down at his feet. There was something wrong--something important--about what the sheriff had just said, but it took a while to find its way from Derek's ears to his brain, and then he felt an awful cold shock of terror and stumbled heavily. The sheriff caught him, leaving them standing still in the mouth of the tunnel.

"You," Derek managed, aware that the sheriff was still patiently holding him up. He still smelled like family. The sheriff had called him a werewolf. "How did you--"

"Scott," the sheriff said shortly, and left it at that while he helped Derek negotiate the rough ground outside the tunnel entrance. They didn't have to walk all the way around to the road; Stiles's light blue Jeep was parked at the top of the slope. For a dizzyingly exciting instant Derek thought Stiles might be inside, but--no, he didn't feel near enough. 

"This thing maneuvers a little better through the woods than my cruiser, and this definitely is not official county business," the sheriff explained, hauling Derek to the passenger seat and dumping him in. Derek was torn between feeling déjà vu--he could smell his own wolfsbane-tainted blood from two days ago--and feeling a little bit closer to Stiles, whose smell was layered over everything else in the Jeep. The sheriff buckled Derek in and then shut the door and ran around. 

When they were bumping through the woods toward the road, toward Stiles, Derek remembered to ask. "Scott told?"

"When Stiles started looking real bad I called Melissa--Scott's mom--to come have a look at him. He's running a fever and I can't wake him up--can't even get him to talk in words, which is the worst sign. Usually he'll have whole conversations even when he's out like a light. As soon as Melissa touched his forehead he started crying in pain, and when she said he had to go to the hospital Scott tried to help pick him up to carry him and Stiles screamed like he was being gutted."

Derek made a small involuntary noise, remembering that wash of scalding pain. "I tried to get out. I dropped the key. I wanted to help, I. I tried."

"Not your fault," the sheriff said firmly. "Scott was so upset by Stiles screaming like that, he lost control a little bit, and then there was a lot of yelling until he, uh--changed back."

"Shifted," Derek offered, and the sheriff nodded in his peripheral vision.

"Shifted, right. Melissa figured out what was wrong with Stiles and we got _him_ calmed down, and then obviously Scott had some explaining to do. He told us the whole thing--him getting bitten by this wild Alpha, the Argents shooting you, this wolfsbane stuff you got poisoned with, Stiles getting it into his head to save you. So I know you didn't have any choice in the matter, and you've been trying to undo what Stiles did. If anybody should be apologizing it's Stiles, for forcing you into a bond you didn't want."

Derek shook his head. "I needed a pack, it's just selfish. He shouldn't be stuck with me. He wanted to help."

"He wanted to be a hero," the sheriff said sourly. "Good heart, but--well, I guess you'll find out. You've got all the time in the world to figure him out now."

"You," this was the part Derek couldn't make sense of. "You don't mind?"

"Scott insists you're better at controlling the werewolf thing than he is, and I know myself you're capable of grace under a hell of a lot of pressure." The sheriff had been the one to interview--interrogate--Derek when they took him in for murdering Laura. Derek had been very carefully polite. 

"I don't consider you a fate worse than death for my kid," the sheriff said with a sigh. "Everything else--we'll figure it out. The two of you are basically married, legally speaking, or you will be soon. There's only so much I can say about it."

"Could've shot me," Derek pointed out. 

The sheriff shook his head, and reached over to set his hand on Derek's shoulder. Derek's whole body relaxed a little at the contact, and he felt that connection again, that warm sense of _pack_. "I've never shot anyone in cold blood. I'm not starting with my son's soulmate."

Derek didn't know what to say to that, how to point out to the sheriff that he wasn't even _human_ , that he'd nearly killed Stiles just by being a werewolf and bonding to him so unbreakably. He couldn't say anything, especially not anything that might make the sheriff rethink bringing Derek to Stiles. Derek could feel the beacon of Stiles's presence, every yard of distance that disappeared from between them. As tired as he was, Derek found himself leaning forward against his seatbelt and the sheriff's steadying grip, trying to be closer.

When they got to Stiles's street, Derek's heart began to thump painfully hard. A nervous buzz filled his whole body, making him want to jump up and run the rest of the distance. The pain and weakness didn't conveniently vanish, though. He had to settle for leaning further forward until he had to brace himself against the dash to ward off his dizziness. _Stiles, Stiles, Stiles_. 

The bond was crying between them, hunger and thirst and absolute wordless need. Derek was barely conscious of the sheriff stopping the car; he fumbled blindly at his seatbelt but had to wait for the sheriff to come and let him out of it. Derek stumbled helplessly as they headed into the house, fell on the stairs and banged his knees. Stiles whimpered in sympathetic pain. 

Derek couldn't hear anything but Stiles then; he fought his way up the steps, staggered to the door of Stiles's room and more or less fell through it. Stiles was thrashing on the bed like he was trying to reach Derek as frantically as Derek was trying to reach him. He stank of pain and sickness, but he was _Stiles_ , Derek's mate, and nothing had ever smelled better to him. Derek fell onto the bed, pressing their bodies together without hesitation.

The first touch of skin on skin--Derek's cheek against Stiles's, Stiles's hands grasping vaguely at Derek's arms--was like being able to breathe again for the first time in hours. Derek let out a moan of relief and Stiles's voice matched it. The pain began to ebb instantly, and Derek felt his own heart and Stiles's settle into an easier rhythm, matching each other. 

Derek was vaguely aware of a woman's voice saying something about skin contact. 

The sheriff said, "The things we do for our kids," and then he was leaning over them. "Derek, hey, loosen up a second."

Derek turned his head so he had his cheek, instead of his eyes, pressed against Stiles's throat. The sheriff was tugging on the hem of Stiles's sweat-soaked shirt. 

"Just let me get it up past your arm, okay?" the sheriff said. "You'll feel better."

Derek nodded, and after several more seconds of holding the sheriff's patient, steady gaze, he lifted his arm enough to let the shirt be tugged up. Stiles made a sound more annoyed than pained when the sheriff hauled his shirt the rest of the way off, dragging it briefly between them, but then Derek's arms were closing around Stiles's bare chest, and they were skin-to-skin from the waist up. Stiles's arms settled over Derek's, his fingers digging in to Derek's wrists as if someone might try to separate them.

"Fluids," the woman's voice said from behind them. 

That had to be Melissa, Scott's mom. Derek could hear a third heartbeat in the room, which had to be Scott's, but Derek couldn't take any attention from filling all his senses with Stiles to confirm the deduction.

The sheriff touched Derek's cheek, and Derek opened his eyes again to find a bottle of juice hovering above his face. "You think you can hold that and drink? You need to hydrate."

Derek nodded and, again, took a few breaths to gather himself before he actually followed instructions. He propped the bottle against Stiles's shoulder and held it with a couple of fingers, chugging down the tepid liquid without having too much of his skin out of contact with Stiles's. The sheriff was carefully sliding a straw between Stiles's lips while Derek drank, and Derek could feel and hear Stiles swallowing in reflexive sips. When Derek finished his own drink he let go of the bottle and lay still, watching Stiles's lips work on the straw, listening to the working of his throat as he swallowed.

The sheriff took the straw from Stiles's mouth while the bottle was still half full, and Derek made a wordless noise of protest that was almost a snarl. The sheriff merely raised his eyebrows.

"He needs more than that," Derek insisted.

"His stomach needs to acclimate," Melissa said, and this time Derek did turn his head far enough to see her out of the corner of his eye. She had a medical kit that looked like a tackle box, and there were more bottles of juice and protein shakes lined up on Stiles's bedside table. "He hasn't kept anything down in nearly two days. That's a good start, and we'll give him more soon. You can help, if you're awake."

"I'll heal," Derek said immediately, though he realized even as he said it that he still felt exhausted and weak. He wasn't sure his hands were steady enough to get a straw into Stiles's mouth without hurting him. And Stiles, despite Derek's presence, hadn't woken up. Derek shifted to look at Stiles's face, slack with sleep. He was hollow-cheeked as if he'd been starved, and there were dark circles under his eyes. He was terribly pale, and his moles stood out more starkly in contrast. 

Derek kissed the corner of his jaw without thinking, and Stiles's lips twitched in something that might have been a smile, but he didn't stir. His grip on Derek's arms stayed tight, but there was no extra squeeze of communication. 

"You will heal," Melissa said. "Which is good, because from what I understand you'll heal Stiles, too. If you weren't a _werewolf_ \--" her emphasis on the word was something Derek couldn't quite read, lingering disbelief or restrained hysteria--"you would both need to be in a hospital right now, quite possibly intensive care. Your bond itself is probably damaged, and it's going to draw energy from you both to repair itself before it lets either of you heal physically, let alone helping you. Can you feel anything from Stiles through your bond? Any emotions, anything?"

"I knew where he was," Derek said, but that pull had been nothing but a compass point. There had been no sense of Stiles himself in it at all. "He's sleeping, would I be able to feel anything?"

He knew the answer to that, though: Stiles had shared Derek's nightmares.

"Normally you would still have a sense of him," Melissa said. "It's okay, it will come back after the bond recovers, especially once it's--" Derek could feel her heart rate kick up a little, but she kept her voice steady and matter of fact as she said, "sealed."

Scott, however, made a weird little noise at the word. Derek decided not to look at Scott, who couldn't possibly be all right with this. Scott had been so upset he'd shifted in front of his mother and Stiles's father. For that matter even the sheriff was accepting Derek, and the sealing of his bond with Stiles, because the alternative was Stiles's death.

"The best thing now is to rest," Melissa said. "We'll get you more to drink in a little while."

Derek nodded without lifting his head or shifting one millimeter of his skin away from Stiles's. The exhaustion was dragging him down, and he wanted nothing but to drown in Stiles. The last thing he felt before he slept was the sheriff's hand, running lightly over his hair.

* * *

Derek woke up exactly enough to hold the drinks he was given while he drained them. After the first couple of times it wasn't the sheriff who woke him but Melissa, coaxing him to prop Stiles up and hold a bottle to his lips. Stiles would drink if Derek tipped a little into his mouth at a time, but he was still deeply asleep. Still, on the second round of protein shakes Derek looked up at Melissa with a grin and said, "He doesn't like the vanilla ones as much as the chocolate. I can feel it."

She smiled, looking tired, and said, "You're sure you're not getting that from the face he's making?"

Derek tilted his head to get a look at Stiles's face, which was tensed in displeasure. 

"Not much more," Derek muttered, rubbing his cheek against the soft stubble of Stiles's hair, and Stiles's mouth relaxed enough to let Derek tip in a little more of the shake. He felt the frisson of renewed dislike through the bond, without seeing him. It seemed to come from a long way off--nothing like the immediate connection they'd shared while Stiles was deep in ritual focus, nor even the easy, automatic awareness of the first moments of their bond, but it was there. Stiles was there.

"I can feel him," Derek repeated, looking over at Melissa, and she nodded. 

"Good. That means you're recovering. You're both looking a little better; I think we can let you sleep a few hours undisturbed, now."

Derek gave Stiles the rest of the shake and then held out the empty can to Melissa. Her fingers brushed Derek's as she took the can from him, and Derek felt a little sting through his fingertips and jerked back. Melissa made an apologetic face. Derek just shook his head and settled his hand on Stiles's chest, easing them both down flat again.

* * *

The next time Derek woke up Stiles was blinking muzzily at him, brown eyes heavy-lidded but bright and focused.

"Did you," Stiles said, and then winced and mumbled, "Sorry, I didn't mean to. Any of this. Sorry."

Derek shook his head, settling his palm on Stiles's cheek. "It's okay, I--"

"You know what, I'm going to go downstairs and listen to music really loudly," Scott announced abruptly, and Derek barely caught a glimpse of him bolting out the bedroom door. 

Derek looked back to Stiles, whose eyes were squeezed shut. Derek could feel the laughter welling between them in the bond, when the shake of Stiles's shoulders and the hitch of his breath alone wouldn't have told him for sure.

"It's okay," Derek repeated, letting himself smile while Stiles was laughing.

Stiles opened his eyes again. "I shouldn't--I didn't let you choose. I didn't know--they told us at school there's no such thing as a forced bond really but I read all this stuff online--you were unconscious, that's the worst, I--"

Derek shook his head. He could tell Stiles the truth of it, now that they were going to have to live with each other. "A wolf needs a pack. A werewolf on his own is always going to be receptive to a bond. I didn't want to be alone either. That's why it worked. I did want it."

Stiles's mouth fell open, too purely shocked for Derek to read anything else even through the bond. "You said you--you said no."

"I was scared," Derek admitted. "I'll probably be even more scared once we're both healed enough to think straight. They'll come after you too now. The Alpha, the Argents. You're a target. I don't know how I'm going to protect you. They'll probably kill us both."

"Then we'll--wait," Stiles said abruptly, looking around his room. "Wait, was Scott's _mom_ here? How did you get here? Where's my dad? He was here when I started getting sick."

"Scott told him what was going on when it got bad," Derek explained. "Your dad came and got me and brought me to you. I don't know where he is now, he's been gone a while."

Stiles's eyes went impossibly wide. "My _dad_ brought you here?"

Derek nodded. "He says he'd rather have you bonded to me than dead, so."

Stiles winced. "He'll probably warm up to you. I think. I don't, um, actually know much about you apart from you're a werewolf and a Hale and you have a really sweet tattoo."

Derek blinked. He felt like he knew everything about Stiles that he needed to--Stiles had saved his life and hadn't left him--but when he tried to think of particular facts he knew about Stiles, he hit the bottom of the barrel pretty fast. "I don't know much about you except that you talk a lot."

Stiles made a little indignant noise and pressed his knuckles against Derek's chest, a wildly unconvincing slow-motion punch. "Dude, pretty sure I told you my entire life story the other day, we were in the car together forever."

"I was kind of distracted having a bullet in my arm poisoning me to death," Derek pointed out. It seemed like years ago now--a funny story they'd be telling their friends, if they had friends who hadn't heard about the whole thing while it was happening. 

"Right. Sorry about that," Stiles agreed, and scooted closer to Derek, tangling their legs together. "You should tell me about your awesome tattoo, though."

They had to start somewhere, Derek thought. The tattoo was easy, especially when he could tell someone the whole truth of it. That hadn't really happened before.

"I got it when I turned eighteen," Derek said, squirming one arm under the pillow so he could rest his hand on Stiles's back. Stiles shifted closer until they were pressed up against each other at the hips and belly, and Derek could settle his fingertips between Stiles's shoulder blades. "Had to go to a guy who knew how to do tattoos on werewolves, otherwise they heal right off. Laura had gotten one the year before--a tree--and she took me to the guy when I decided I wanted one."

"Whazzit, though?" Stiles mumbled, nuzzling aimlessly against Derek's jaw. 

Derek yawned and tilted his forehead against Stiles's. "Triskele. It symbolizes change, different statuses. Alpha, beta, omega. Leader, follower, loner. Any wolf can be any of those. Everything changes."

"Not us," Stiles mumbled, and Derek could feel that he was nearly asleep, felt himself being dragged down into sleep through the bond. "Me and you, that won't change. We're for good."

"Good," Derek agreed, too close to sleep to remember that he knew better.

* * *

The next time Derek woke up, it was to a confusing sense of revulsion. He had his nose tucked behind Stiles's ear, his arms wrapped firmly around Stiles's chest, but--

"Ugh," Stiles muttered. "Dude, we reek."

Derek winced. Once his attention was drawn to it he couldn't filter out the smell of the two of them. They weren't just sweaty and unwashed but rank with sickness and misery. "Shower?"

"Yeah," Stiles agreed, but didn't move. Derek could feel an odd little tension winding his body and then Stiles said cautiously, "Together?"

Derek tightened his grip on Stiles at the question, which raised the possibility of doing anything _not_ together right now. "Yes."

Stiles relaxed a little, but then he said, "Um, just to be clear--"

"Showering," Derek said firmly, shifting his hips a fraction of an inch away from Stiles's ass. "I don't want half a skull fracture when you slip and fall."

"Gonna warn you right now, that's a possibility even if we're not attempting adventurous shower sex," Stiles pointed out. His heart sped up a little, daringly, on those last words, but Derek wasn't going to think about that until he had to. Now was not the time. "I'm not, you know. Graceful. Even by human standards."

"I'll catch you," Derek promised. "As long as you're not distracting me."

From downstairs, in the vicinity of the low muttering of the TV, Scott called up, "Okay, but could you not? Because I'll hear you."

"Turn the TV up louder then!" Stiles yelled back, and Derek winced again. Stiles reached back and patted his ear apologetically. Derek realized he could feel the little pulse of chagrin behind it, and turned his head to kiss Stiles's palm, pushing back amusement.

"Oh," Stiles said, and Derek felt his startled happiness at the gesture in their healed bond, and echoed it right back to him.

"Shower," Derek repeated, and tried to squirm toward the edge of the bed without letting go of Stiles.

Stiles wriggled impatiently and scooted himself away, and Derek made himself let go. Stiles made it exactly as far as standing up in a wobbling rush, entirely out of contact with Derek, and then he turned and half-fell back onto the bed, brown eyes wide in a paper-white face. Derek caught him, sitting up to meet him, and then held on to Stiles through his own wash of dizziness. They were somehow both still sitting semi-upright when it passed, resting their heads on each other's shoulders like a puzzle ring. 

Stiles said, "Okay, so. Not letting go."

"No," Derek agreed, "also you're been lying flat for twenty-four hours, your blood needs a minute to figure out up and down again."

"Orthostatic hypotension," Stiles agreed, as if the name made a difference. "Do werewolves get that?"

"Not when they're not half starved and freshly bonded." Derek raised his head cautiously from Stiles's shoulder to see if the world would stay right side up and in color. It did, so Derek prodded Stiles to sit up straight beside him. 

Stiles spotted the stuff on the bedside table first--not only bottles of juice and protein shakes, but a sleeve of Saltine crackers. They stayed put long enough to eat the snack they'd been supplied with--Stiles washed down his share of the crackers with cran-grape juice instead of the chocolate protein shake Derek selected--and then sat a while longer, catching their breath and letting their stomachs settle. They didn't speak, just sat pressed together on the bed. That was enough.

When it seemed safe to try the next step, Derek tugged on Stiles's hand. They slowly and carefully rose to stand, arms looped firmly around each other.

As they shuffled from the side of the bed to the door, Derek heard Scott returning almost soundlessly from the hallway outside down to the living room. It occurred to Derek that Stiles, in forging the bond between them, had also forced Scott to accept Derek as a packmate, whether or not Scott understood that that was what they were. Derek swayed toward Stiles just enough to kiss the top of his shoulder, and Stiles, after a quick startled thump in his heartbeat, pressed a quick kiss to Derek's temple and then reached out to open the door.

They made their way across the hall to the bathroom and inside, and Derek pushed the door shut behind them. Stiles met his eyes in the mirror and then his gaze skittered down their half-clothed bodies and back up. They both still looked underfed, but neither of them could be mistaken for a corpse.

Stiles plucked at his pajama pants with his free hand and said, "Um...."

"Do you usually take showers with clothes on?" Derek unbuttoned his own jeans as he spoke, because waiting around wasn't going to make this less awkward. They were a long way from ready to have sex, if that was how this was going to go, but that wasn't the only thing nakedness meant. Stiles was human, and would probably never be able to be as casually naked as a born werewolf, but there was no time like the present to start teaching him.

"No," Stiles said, as Derek unzipped.

Derek found that he recognized the half-terrified excitement pouring off Stiles more than he'd like. Derek had felt like that, watching Kate get naked, but Kate had never risked a bond with him. Kate thought he was an animal. Whatever other mistakes Derek might make--however right Kate might have been about him--he wouldn't do that to Stiles. He couldn't be that to Stiles. They were mates. They could never betray each other.

Before he could overthink it any more, Derek stopped what he was doing, leaned in and kissed Stiles briefly but firmly on the mouth. Stiles's whole body responded, his legs and back stiffening while his arms flailed out wildly for a moment before his hands came back to clutch at Derek's shoulders. Derek was already pulling back from the kiss by then.

"I know this is scary," Derek said. "But I don't want you to be scared of me. If we have to just wash up in sections, if you want me to turn my back--"

Stiles lunged in and kissed him back, smashing his lower lip against Derek's teeth because Derek was still talking. Stiles broke the kiss and sagged against him, panting with effort.

"I wanna take a shower with you," Stiles insisted, still clutching Derek's shoulders. "I want you, I just. First time, okay? I'm nervous."

Stiles was more than nervous, but Derek was willing to believe that it wasn't Derek Stiles was scared of, at least. There was plenty more to be scared of: the enormity of what their bond meant and all the people who might be trying to kill them, for instance. Derek wrapped his arms around Stiles's shoulders and said quietly, "You don't have to be nervous with me. We're bonded."

Stiles shrugged and made a face. "Yeah, but--I don't want you to just like me because you have to, or--or _fuck_ me because you have to."

Derek huffed an irritated breath out through his nose. "Nothing about how you look naked is going to make me like you less. Or want you less. It's just skin."

"Easy for you to say, you are literally supernaturally hot," Stiles insisted, but annoyance was overtaking his fear. This was starting to feel more like him and Stiles doing something together and less like Stiles facing the terrifying unknown.

"Take your clothes off," Derek replied, and succeeded in sounding gruff enough to make Stiles laugh as he shoved his pants down.

"There, okay?" Stiles demanded, extending one arm while he held on to Derek with the other hand. 

"Okay," Derek agreed, looking Stiles up and down while he peeled his own jeans down and off, a somewhat more involved process than Stiles dropping his pajama pants. When he straightened up he mirrored Stiles's pose, extending one arm and raising his eyebrows. 

Stiles looked him over, slightly dazed, the quick spark of teenaged arousal cutting through their mutual sleepy dullness.

Probably no trouble sealing the bond the usual way once they were both capable of staying awake and getting it up, then. Derek glanced down again, but Stiles's dick was still as limp as his was; they might be getting better now but they weren't actually well yet.

"Come on," Derek said, tugging against Stiles's grip. "Shower."

Stiles nodded and dragged Derek along with him for the two steps--slightly complicated by each of them having to step out of their pants as they went--over to the bathtub. 

It was, technically, big enough for both of them to stand in, though Derek wasn't sure they'd both be able to get wet at the same time. Stiles leaned against the wall as he turned on the faucet, testing the warmth with his fingers. Derek held a hand toward it, palm out, to feel when heat began to radiate from the stream of water. It was nearly as hot as he liked it when Stiles turned the shower on, which made sense. Stiles's skin was bound to be more delicate than Derek's. 

They got in one foot at a time, silently taking turns. When the curtain was pulled shut they were closed into a hot little space that smelled overwhelmingly of the two of them and Stiles's soap and shampoo. Stiles was under the spray, so Derek reached back and grabbed his body wash and the duck-shaped bath sponge, offering it to Stiles with a raised eyebrow.

"Shut up, it has exactly the right texture," Stiles muttered, leaning bodily against Derek as he used both hands to squeeze soap into the sponge. Derek sighed at the press of Stiles's damp skin against his chest, familiar from the last several hours but new now, better. The satisfaction of it bounced back and forth between them until Derek reached over Stiles's shoulder and took the soap back.

He set it on the edge of the tub and curled an arm around Stiles to steady him as he started washing. Derek stood and watched for about thirty seconds before he took the sponge from Stiles and scrubbed his armpits more thoroughly than the cursory swipe Stiles had given them. Stiles jerked and let out a high-pitched giggle while Derek got him properly clean, but didn't actually demand his bath sponge back. Derek could feel that he liked it--was embarrassed by liking it, but liked it all the same--through the bond.

Derek took that for permission and muttered, "Lean on the wall," as he shifted his arm, guiding Stiles to turn in the tight space of the shower. Stiles followed his hand, settling his own hand over Derek's to keep it pressed to his skin, the only steady skin contact while Derek scrubbed Stiles with the sponge. 

Each glancing touch of his fingertips against Stiles's soapy skin felt like a little jolt of electricity, warm and startling every time. Derek worked his way down Stiles's chest and then folded down carefully to his knees and squeezed soap suds into Stiles's pubes, lathering the hair there and soaping him thoroughly. Stiles made a startled noise when Derek's hand closed around his dick, meaning to wash him there, too.

Derek stopped and looked up, loosening his hand so he wasn't quite touching. Stiles's eyes were wide, his face flushed so hot Derek could almost feel the heat of it over the water rushing down around them.

"Just washing," Derek said. "I won't if you don't want me to."

"No, go ahead, please," Stiles said, his voice cracking a little. 

Derek grinned, showing all his teeth. He tapped a quick kiss against the point of Stiles's hip before he went back to what he was doing. Derek washed Stiles's dick and balls with the same gentle thoroughness as every other part of Stiles's body, though the concentration of Stiles's scent there made him almost dizzy. When he was done he helped Stiles turn around and cleaned his ass--Stiles squeaked and then went still--and then his legs and feet.

Derek stood up to scrub Stiles's back only to find himself going dizzy again. His heartbeat was a painful quick thump in his chest, and Stiles swayed forward to lean against the wall and said, "Sorry, tired. I should help you."

Derek shook his head and started quickly scrubbing himself clean, the pleasant tactile experience of washing Stiles replaced by a race against the creeping blank exhaustion that was smothering them both. Derek was nearly clean enough to bear himself when Stiles turned to face him. He squirted shampoo into Derek's hair and lathered it while Derek stood still, balanced on his own feet, head bowed into Stiles's hands. Stiles slid down to his knees after that, holding on to Derek all the way down. Derek blinked down at Stiles through a haze--Stiles's cheek was right beside his dick--while Stiles washed each of his feet. 

That was the point where the last of their mutual energy leached out completely. Derek leaned over to shut off the water, and folded down to sit in the tub facing Stiles without quite falling, but that was it. They slumped in against each other and sat there in the steamy warmth of the shower. Their heartbeats seemed to echo against the tile, sounding like a whole pack in Derek's weary ears. 

If they were a whole pack, Derek thought, maybe someone would come and get them and he wouldn't have to figure out how to get Stiles out of the bathtub before he got cold.

He did have a pack, though, he remembered muzzily. He lifted his head from where he'd been leaning it on Stiles's wet shoulder and said, "Hey, Scott, some help?"

It took twenty minutes and the help of a chair, a baseball bat, and Scott wielding a lacrosse stick while wearing oven mitts, but they got more or less toweled off and into bed without anyone suffering a head injury.

* * *

Dreaming merged into wakefulness without any obvious transition. Derek gradually became aware that he really was naked and pressed full-length against Stiles. They were kissing sloppily, mouths not quite on target, and thrusting aimlessly against each other. They were both hard and both half-awake. 

Derek pulled back just enough to say, "Stiles? This okay?"

"Mm," Stiles said, hitching his hips awkwardly to push his dick against Derek's hip. "Yeah, s'good. S'like a dream? Or jerking off? Except you're here. Right?"

Derek didn't think it was supposed to be like either of those things, except he knew what Stiles meant. It kind of was like that. Soulbonded, neither of them was ever going to jerk off entirely alone ever again, and this had started in a mutual dream. They were awake now, but that wasn't really a reason to stop if neither of them wanted to, except....

"Oh, hey, good," Stiles agreed. "Gotta seal it sometime, right?"

Derek nodded and worked one arm under Stiles's waist to pull him close as Derek rolled onto his back, hauling Stiles along and on top of him. Stiles should be on top, Derek vaguely thought. First time. He should be in control.

"Aww, thanks," Stiles said, with a sleepy, goofy grin. He scooted down a little, lining up their dicks again, and kissed along Derek's collarbone as he reached his hand between them. Derek held him up so he wouldn't just drop flat on top of Derek--not that that wouldn't feel fine--and he said, "Wait, is Scott--"

Stiles went still with his fingers just barely curled around Derek's dick, almost distracting Derek from his own question.

"Scott?" Stiles said out loud. 

No answer came from downstairs, but Derek stretched out his senses and found someone asleep on the couch. Someone human. Focusing more he could pick up the sound of breathing, which didn't sound like the sheriff's. 

"Melissa, I think," Derek said, and he finally noticed that it was dark outside as he said, "Sleeping."

"Okay," Stiles said. "That's okay then, right? We'll just--be--quiet," and he stretched into another kiss, arching his back and rocking to rub his dick against Derek's belly, his hand finally closing around Derek's.

Derek exhaled into the kiss, letting his hands slide down to Stiles's ass, holding on while Stiles tried to coordinate thrusting and stroking. His rhythm was off, but Derek didn't care; he relaxed into Stiles's easy desire for him, for this. 

This just felt _good_. It was uncomplicated, with no secret fear, no secret _anything_. This was a good first time, Derek thought: in his own bed, protected, accepted, known and allowed and gentle and easy. No weird games, no taunts and teases. Derek let himself sink into the rhythm of Stiles's body moving against his, the warm pleasure rising gradually into urgency. 

Derek realized he could feel what Stiles was feeling at the same time he closed his own hand on Stiles's dick, mirroring the sensations. Stiles made a little breathless noise, startled and pleased, and their rhythm settled after that, moving faster and faster toward a climax that could be more than sex--the sealing of their bond, the completion of everything. Derek felt sweat rolling down Stiles's skin and knew that Stiles felt the friction of the sheets against Derek's back. Their hands moved in not-quite unison, feeling out the other's sweet spots and favorite strokes with the certainty of instant, perfect feedback. 

"What'd I say," Stiles said with a grin, "just like--oh, _fuck_."

Stiles came a second before Derek did, but the orgasm ripped through both their bodies together, a hot wet rush that whited out all other thought.

When Derek became aware of his own body again it was full of a pleasant warm glow, sleepy in a different way than the sodden exhaustion of the last few days. His hand, still trapped in the sticky warmth between his belly and Stiles's, was linked with Stiles's, their fingers interlaced, knuckles pressed into flesh with every breath they took. 

"Man, we're gonna have to shower again," Stiles mumbled, and Derek smiled. 

"This smells a lot better," Derek assured him, tucking his head down to breathe in the sex-smell of the two of them mingled together. "We can wait."

"Ugh, wolf," Stiles shoved ineffectually at Derek's face. He pushed himself up to grab at the box of tissues on the headboard, wiping his hand first and then tossing a wad of tissues at Derek. Derek obediently wiped himself up, though he licked his fingers clean. He felt a little jolt go through Stiles at that, and looked up with two fingers still in his mouth to meet Stiles's wide eyes.

Derek took the fingers from his mouth and offered them to Stiles, and Stiles closed his eyes, lowered his head, and put his mouth where Derek's had been. There wasn't much left for him to taste, but Derek squirmed under him at the suction of Stiles's mouth on his hand, Stiles's quick tongue swiping against his skin.

"Next time," Derek said, and Stiles opened his mouth and let Derek's fingers fall away as he gave a quick nod.

Derek felt the edge of Stiles's rapid-fire thoughts before he said, "Did it work, though? I mean, I am totally in favor of there being a next time, but--did we do it?"

Derek frowned. Nothing felt very different, really, but his bond to Stiles felt as full of warm contentment as anything he could imagine. Had that been it? People said the bond changed after it was sealed, but he didn't know what that meant. He had hardly any idea what their bond had really felt like to begin with, before they'd nearly killed it.

"Well," Stiles said practically. "If we're sealed we can stand to be apart, right? So--"

Stiles gathered up the mess of tissues and scooted off of Derek, heading for the trash can by his desk. He made it about two steps away from the bed before the itchy, aching misery of not touching hauled Derek out of bed to press up against his back.

"Okay," Stiles said shakily, a cold pall falling over the pleasure of a moment ago. "So that didn't--"

Derek took the crumpled tissues from his hand and flung the whole mess into the trash can, then kissed the back of Stiles's neck. "It's okay. Sometimes it's not sex, like you said. That was just our first try."

"Oh," Stiles said, disappointment turning on a dime to wild speculation and a barrage of porn-fantasy images. "Do you think it has to be something else? More? Or, like--"

Derek heard movement downstairs and froze a half-second before Melissa's voice called up from downstairs, "Stiles? Derek? Are you okay?"

Stiles froze for a second in Derek's grip and then burst into motion, dragging Derek with him over to the dresser and frantically pulling on underwear and pajama pants. Derek helped himself to a pair of sweatpants as he murmured, "She's still downstairs," and Stiles said, "Oh my God she's _right downstairs_."

She wasn't, actually, even as Stiles was saying it; she was coming up, because neither of them had said anything she could hear.

Derek yanked the sweatpants up and called out, "It's fine, we're fine."

"Feeling a lot better actually!" Stiles yelled. "No need to check on us, nothing is wrong at all, just, uh, just talking--"

Derek clapped his hand over Stiles's mouth just in time to hear Melissa snort softly and turn to go back down the stairs.

"You should stay in bed," she called as she went. "You still need more rest. No more _talking_ tonight, okay?"

Stiles's eyes went wide, and he flushed bright red under Derek's fingers. 

Derek called back, "Yeah, we're going back to sleep now."

Stiles scrambled into bed and dragged a pillow over his head like he meant to smother himself. Derek followed him a half step behind, spooning up behind him and shoving the pillow out of his way until Stiles gave up on holding it over his head.

"Do you think maybe she literally meant no more talking?" Stiles asked in a piercing whisper. "Because--"

"Shh," Derek whispered back. _Not out loud, like this_.

 _Oh, right, this is better_ , Stiles agreed. He lay there planning what else they could try when Melissa wasn't downstairs keeping an ear out for them until Derek fell back into dreaming.

* * *

Derek woke up when someone came into the room, the opening door spilling light in from the hallway. He hauled himself up to half-cover Stiles's body with his, but it was only the sheriff, looking weary. Derek's eyes dropped to his gun, which stank of wolfsbane. He felt a glimmer of guilty fear--he'd had sex with Stiles, the bond still wasn't sealed, _now_ it would happen--but the sheriff shook his head.

"Scott smelled that too," the sheriff said, leaving the door open behind him as he came further inside. "It's not for either of you, son, I promise you that. I had a long talk with Chris and Victoria Argent today."

Derek's eyes jerked back up to the sheriff's. 

"I don't know that I should be making this kind of deal," the sheriff sighed, and came to sit down on the corner of the bed, just past Stiles's feet. 

Derek sat back warily, keeping one hand on Stiles's shoulder. The sheriff's gaze flicked down, taking that in. He turned his palms out, faintly placating, before he set his hands down on his knees. 

"You're family," the sheriff said firmly. "Maybe even--pack?"

Derek wanted that so badly that he froze, unable to nod or shake his head or say anything at all.

"I'm going to protect you, and Stiles, and Scott," the sheriff said. "Aside from the fact that I care about you boys personally, as far as I've heard from anyone all three of you are law-abiding citizens who've never hurt anyone, werewolves or not, unlike this damn alpha that's running around. He bit Scott and killed your sister and Garrison Myers, and I don't think _he's_ going to come along quietly if I try to arrest him."

Derek winced at the thought, his gaze dropping down to the sheriff's gun in fresh calculation. Would it be enough to stop the alpha, if the sheriff wound up face to face with him?

"Speaking of which," the sheriff went on. "Do you have _any_ idea who the alpha might be?"

Derek shook his head slowly. "I'm not even positive that he's male--I've only seen him in the shifted form he takes, and it's not... obvious, one way or the other. Any werewolf can become an alpha. Laura was one, and--" 

The sheriff's expression turned gentle and sympathetic, and Derek had to look away to spit the rest of the words out. "Any werewolf who killed her would have become an alpha when they did. That could be why, if it was this alpha who did it."

"You think it wasn't?"

Derek shrugged. "The Argents killed the rest of my family. Cutting the body in half, that's something hunters do. Not us."

"Whoa, wait," the sheriff said, and Derek felt him leaning forward. "I want your side of that--Chris Argent said that you've always thought that about the fire, but he insists he and Victoria had nothing to do with it."

"No?" Derek said. "Did you ask Kate? Because--"

Stiles turned in his sleep, frowning as he slung an arm across Derek's thighs, tucking his head in against Derek's hip, and Derek's thoughts went in a hundred directions at once: he didn't want Kate anywhere near the Stilinskis--he didn't want to explain--he had had sex with Stiles who was now six inches and a pair of worn sweatpants away from his crotch while Stiles's father sat at the end of the bed.

"Kate Argent has left town," the sheriff said slowly, wrenching Derek's attention back to him. "I have a warrant out for her arrest for your attempted murder, and if I thought it would help anything I'd haul Chris and Victoria both in as accessories, but I get the impression that I'd be kicking an awfully big hornet's nest. Proving you were shot at all would be tricky enough now that you're healed, let alone proving what people who didn't pull the trigger had to do with it."

Derek shook his head. "Don't do that. Just--Kate lived here at the time of the fire. She knew things about my family, she knew what we were, and she set that fire to kill us because she thinks we're animals."

"Christ," the sheriff said softly, not disbelieving. Derek could read horror and sympathy on him, nothing else. "Derek, if you're prepared to testify about exactly what you know Kate Argent knew--I'm going to have to look into this. If we can prove she had anything to do with that fire you can bet your life I'm not going to let it go at just keeping her out of my county and away from you and Stiles. We will hunt her down, and I don't care how many wasps fly out after her."

Derek looked down at Stiles, running his palm over the softness of his buzzed hair. He would do anything to protect Stiles. Even confess. He just didn't know if it would do any good. "No one's going to believe me."

That's what she'd always said. He'd thought it was a joke they shared, at the beginning, but that last poisonous message made it clear that it had always been a taunt.

"I believe you," the sheriff said firmly, and Derek couldn't help focusing on the steady, honest beat of his heart. 

_Family_ , he'd said. _Pack_. Humans mostly didn't know what that word meant, but the sheriff seemed like he was on his way to figuring it out. 

"You leave the investigating to me, son, and the proving to the prosecutors. We'll see what happens, but you've got me in your corner, so--"

Derek turned his head toward the window, rolling over to cover Stiles's body with his own an instant before the glass shattered inward and the black bulk of the alpha exploded into the room. The monster turned its red eyes on him and growled. Derek felt his own eyes light up blue in response, his fangs dropping as he braced himself for a futile fight. Stiles thrashed under him and then froze, tensed to bolt or join him in battle.

Before any of them could move the sheriff said, "Hands up, you're under arrest."

Derek didn't dare take his eyes off the alpha, but it turned its head toward where Derek could hear the sheriff was standing--he'd gotten up off the bed, backed up to the doorway--and gave a laughing, contemptuous roar. One clawed hand swung toward Derek and he ducked his head, trying to cover Stiles more thoroughly. Pain sliced across his back, and then there were two loud pops, lost in a louder roar and the sickening wet sounds of a too-fast transformation.

Stiles fought halfway free of him while Derek was still raising his head to look, and his eyes locked on the red gaze of his uncle, who was staggering back against Stiles's bedroom wall as blood welled black from his chest. The claw marks burned across Derek's back, and he could smell Stiles's blood from their shared wounds. He could feel a confused flood of feelings from Stiles--fear and shock and protective fury--but Derek stood and walked the few feet to where Peter was leaning against the wall. 

They were wolfsbane bullets, and they'd hit close to the heart. Peter was dying, and Derek could hardly grasp what was happening. _Peter_ was the alpha? Peter had killed Laura, killed that bus driver? Peter had forced the bite on Scott and then abandoned him. Peter had opened the wounds that were bleeding on Derek's back and Stiles's right now.

"How could you?" Derek whispered.

Peter's eyes lit up again, and his lips pulled up in a mocking smile that looked familiar even with black blood staining his teeth and lips. Derek remembered, after six years of thinking of Peter only as a victim of everything Derek had done wrong, all the ways he'd always been a little bit afraid of Peter. 

Peter opened his mouth to speak and Derek leaned in closer. Maybe Peter would _explain_ , maybe it would all make sense.

Everything happened at once: Peter's clawed hand shooting out to swipe at his throat, and Stiles screaming " _Dad!_ " and the sound of the gunshot behind him and the side of Peter's head exploding in a spray of black blood and the world turning red.

Derek straightened up as Peter's body slid all the way to the floor. He felt power rushing through him like fire, red and wild. The wounds on his back and Stiles's vanished like they'd never been there, and he felt wide awake, stronger than he'd ever been. His whole body buzzed with power and the same power echoed through Stiles, doubling the sensation. Stiles scrambled up out of bed and launched himself at Derek, and Derek caught him, pressing them together down the whole length of their bodies while holding Stiles clear of all the blood.

"Son," the sheriff said, and Derek looked up to see that he'd lowered the gun but was still holding on to it. The sheriff was looking at him, not Stiles. "Did you recognize him?"

"My uncle," Derek managed, arms locked around Stiles. "Peter Hale. He--we thought he'd never recovered, after the fire, but he must have--"

Derek looked down at Peter's body. Under the damage from that last bullet, his face was symmetrical and perfectly healed now. Derek loosened his grip on Stiles and knelt, reaching out to wipe away the blood and little pieces to put his hand to Peter's unscarred face. He'd forgotten what Peter looked like under the burns; no pictures of him from before the fire had survived. It was almost like looking at a stranger. Almost.

Stiles was pressed up against Derek's back, arms locked around his chest. Stiles said, "So, uh, this is weird, but I feel really great. Do you feel really great right now?"

Derek tried to laugh. It was an absurd question. How could he feel _great_? He was the last survivor of his pack now, Peter had killed Laura and was lying here dead--and yet Derek _did_ feel great, more than he ever had in his life. He felt stronger and faster and _better_. 

The laugh came out more like a sob, but Derek said, "I'm the alpha now. I inherited it from him. He took it from Laura and it healed him, and now I--"

He felt dizzy and terrified. He could do _anything_ with this much power. He could go after the Argents and kill every last one of them with his new strength; he could bite a dozen betas and build himself a stronger pack than his mother had ever ruled. He could--

"Hey, whoa, baby steps," Stiles murmured against the back of his ear. "Tell me what this means. Can you--"

Derek caught the mental image from Stiles and moved to obey without thinking, turning around awkwardly on his knees as Stiles loosened his grip. He felt the squelch when Stiles knelt down again; Peter's blood was soaking Stiles's bedroom carpet, squishing out all over Stiles's knees, staining the soft pajama pants he knew were Stiles's favorite. So the first thing Derek said, when he met Stiles's wide brown eyes and knew his own were still glowing uncontrollably red, was, "I'm sorry."

Stiles shook his head. "Dude, we'll clean up, we've got that one down cold. Just tell me what this is. You're the alpha now?"

"I'm the alpha," Derek repeated, holding Stiles's gaze, trying to make him understand. "I was never supposed to be. Neither was Peter. It was supposed to go from my mother to my sister, they were ready for it, but Peter must have--and now I--what if I--"

Derek could feel it, a kind of wildness like he hadn't experienced since he was a teenager spending half his full moon nights in the basement cage. An alpha was stronger than any other werewolf. He needed more control. Derek could go wild now, could lose himself every bit as much as Peter had, killing and biting and--

"No," Stiles said, his hands framing Derek's face, forcing Derek to meet his eyes again. "Hey, no. You've got me, remember? I'm not going to let you go nuts with this, you're not going to hurt anybody. I won't let you. If you're an alpha, I'm kind of an alpha too, right?"

Derek just stared. He could feel Stiles's jumble of keyed-up emotions as if they were his own: a vague revulsion at the mess of Peter's corpse, an utter lack of other sadness, and over it all a sense of relief. _We're safe, it's okay, we're safe now._

That had to mean Stiles could read him just as clearly: his fear, his impulse to kill, everything about him that marked him as half-animal and entirely unworthy to be an alpha, but Stiles just--

"I told you," Stiles insisted. "This doesn't change. We don't change. You're stuck with me, and as soon as we get washed up I'm going to make you demonstrate all your cool new superpowers."

Derek closed his eyes and let himself believe it. A laugh bubbled out of him effortlessly this time, hysterical and confused but real. It felt a little like the first second of the bond, that golden warmth that had jerked him away from the edge of death, but more so. This was doubled, mutual, entirely aware. It felt more like a wall coming down than something entering into him.

"Oh," Derek said, opening his eyes again to see Stiles feeling exactly what he felt. "Oh."

Stiles's mouth twisted into a reluctant smile. "Okay, not as much fun as I thought sealing a bond was going to be, but, hey, we did it."

Derek nodded, dazed, as the bond between them settled into the place it would occupy for the rest of his life, a sense of Stiles right alongside all his other senses. 

The surge of unfamiliar power settled down, sinking into his bones, held fast and safely. He'd never been anchored so securely, not even when he was growing up in a pack that naturally anchored each other. Anger had never been anything but a storm anchor, keeping him pointed in more or less the right direction. This was a true anchor--not Stiles himself, but the bond between them, the newly-sealed _certainty_ that he would never be alone again, that his pack would always have the two of them at its heart. This anchor was enough to hold an alpha steady, enough to build a pack and a family and a life on.

"Boys," the sheriff said, abruptly reminding Derek of his presence. 

Stiles's head jerked around too, and Derek heard his thought, crystal clear: _Oh, good. I always wanted Dad to be at my wedding._

Derek let out a small blurt of laughter, disbelief and wonder and _Stiles_. Stiles's gaze came back to him immediately, a smile blooming on his face in answer.

"If you're done," the sheriff said, with a slightly pained but not really unhappy expression on his face-- _just like after the sixth-grade science fair_ , Stiles contributed, with a mix of sheepishness and defiant pride.

"This is a crime scene," the sheriff said, waving an open hand at Peter's body and taking in Stiles's whole bedroom. "Two squad cars are going to be pulling up any second, and we're all going to--"

There was a pounding at the front door, and Derek belatedly turned his senses to pick up the presence of four humans, two on the porch and two hanging back in the driveway. " _Sheriff?_ "

Derek felt fear and the impulse to fight crop up again, but they were only ideas, nothing that could control him. Stiles's hand closed around his, and Derek held on firmly. 

Stiles said, "It's okay, they're on our side. We've got this."

His heart didn't miss a beat, but Derek didn't need to hear that to believe him.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Now Until the End](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2339657) by [sapphirescribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphirescribe/pseuds/sapphirescribe)




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